Mars is calling, and the vehicles that might take us there are about to be road-tested. The maiden flights of two spacecraft, one government and one private, could make or break plans to put humans on the Red Planet within the next few decades.

In September, NASA will launch its Orion capsule on a 4-hour jaunt around Earth. Echoing the Apollo capsules that took humans to the moon, Orion is designed to carry people on long-range space missions. The upcoming tests will showcase Orion's flightworthiness and the ability of its heat shield to withstand a fiery re-entry.

NASA hopes the pilotless flight will inform its current vision for space exploration, which involves a crewed orbit around the moon in 2021, a visit to an asteroid in 2025 and a Mars mission by the 2030s.

Next year will also see the first launch of the Falcon Heavy rocket, built by private firm SpaceX. Able to fling 13,200 kilograms on a path to Mars, Falcon Heavy will be the most powerful rocket in operation. It doesn't quite have the oomph to send humans and all their gear to Mars in one shot, but it could start by sending supplies to the planet's surface ahead of the crew – an idea championed by Mars One, a Dutch firm hoping to land people on Mars by 2025. Alternatively, the rocket could launch components into orbit that could be assembled into a Mars-bound vehicle.

Further down the road, NASA should debut an even more powerful rocket, the Space Launch System, that could loft humans and all their equipment at once aboard Orion. The planned tests hint that a human mission to Mars starts next year, but with a few small steps rather than one giant leap.

This article appeared in print under the headline "...while reaching for mars"

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